A doorway with a rubbish filled stairwell suggests worse beyond. Yet the steps were painted with colourful flowers, now worn away.
The steps leads to the office of a smart business. Inside all is elegant.
Beyond that is the home of a friend of mine. Renovated. Very local.
My family had written to request accommodation. The owner asked, 'Would Angela like to sleep overnight on a yoga mat?'
Now the other family and mine are used to trekking up Everest and Kilimanjaro and spending nights in tents and hammocks, sleeping in hostels.
Sorry. I will sleep on a one star hotel or a youth hostel. But I gave up camping after my first experience at the age of 16 when we trekked uphill in the dark with torches past cows to toilets made of giant tin barrels. I do not camp on floors, unless I have a mattress.
My family replied on my behalf, that, 'No, Angela would prefer, expect a bed.'
With great rouble and ingenuity, specially for my visit, an IKEA wardrobe is turned on its side to form a bed base. The area is extended with more wood. A thin mattress is laid on top and a new set of matching sheets and pillows.
The window curtain is removed and fixed to a rail to create the side wall, a bit like a hospital bed. The base of the bed is concealed behind a wall improvised by another IKEA cupboard and a giant fridge.
En route, I passed the constantly open door of a group of workers who appeared to sleep in bunk beds with no bedding. Compared to them, we are in luxury.
I hesitated to take a photo. I should have got into conversation, asked where they were from, and taken a group photo, printed it for them on a friend's computer, or emailed my friend a copy, catching their surroundings to show you. I can't so I shall have to describe it.
All I need to say is that I could see the bare board floor, the wooden bunk beds with no bedding (reminiscent of those photos of Auschwitz) the bare board table, and workers perched on low wooden stools.
I had mixed reports about the other inhabitants of the building. One person told me, "People work on building sites. They are used to being surrounded by rubble. Pointless clearing it up - they will just make more mess next day."
Another person told me: "The workers are very good. They try to clear up. I've offered them a small tip to clear up. But people from outside tip stuff in."
Wooden Floors
I remained bothered by their lack of bedding. What about wooden floors? OK, everybody has wooden floors. Some people varnish the floors. Some people stain floors black. Wooden floors were the fashion. Carpets need sweeping and rugs must be bashed out by maids or cleaners or you. If you have carpets you must take off your shoes.
In the UK in my lat parents' home the rules were and still are that tenants must carpet their floors to prevent noise. What sort of noise? Footsteps. Furniture movement - such as dining chairs. Drawers shutting and wardrobe doors and room doors. Echoing of voices.
Noise
In Hong Kong the traffic outside creates such a din that most of the time you don't hear the people living and working above and below. You are more likely to hear people passing, clattering footsteps and talking on the concrete stairs outside beyond the front door which opens onto the living room or main room. Or the sounds from outside your open window of the shouting revellers, clattering carts, horns of cars and taxis, tooting traffic and trundling trams. And the clattering of rain on metal roofs, cars, awnings, and metal rubbish bins all around.
Donating Bedding?
As you can imagine, I am not happy about the way the workers are obliged to live. Surely I or somebody else can obtain a job lot of sheets and pillowcases for them.
Would they be grateful? I can see that they might not want the nuisance of tablecloths, nor rugs to trip over. But would they want bedding?
When I arrived back in Singapore, I told a friend about the beds with no bedding. Her view was totally unexpected.
"They won't want bedding," she said. "It attracts bed bugs. Even if you give them new bedding, it soon becomes infected. The bed bugs would get in their clothes and bite everybody."
Getting Rid Of Bed Bugs
She sighed, "It's dreadful trying to get rid of bed bugs. We brought them back from a five star hotel. Bugs got into everything: the bedding, all our clothes, the curtains, tablecloths, behind the furniture, everywhere. We had to throw out all our clothes.
"Now, when we go on holiday, I buy a new set of sheets and pillowcases and even pillows. At the end of the holiday I throw them away."
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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